New Chip Designs Compete with Intel's IA-64 Earlier this month at San Jose's annual Microprocessor Forum, major chip developers AMD, IBM, Compaq and HP revealed their next-generation chip designs. Facing off against Intel's IA-64 chip (recently receiving the official name of "Itanium"), these competitors have evolved different design strategies in an effort to unseat -- or at least put a dent in the sales of -- the leader. Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) disclosed it will extend the existing x86 architecture into 64-bit processing in its Sledgehammer CPU, allowing software developers to keep their existing versions intact. This is compared with Intel's IA-64 architecture, which will be essentially a whole new platform and will require developers to reconfigure their software to accommodate it. AMD is betting their strategy will ensure them the lower-end market in the 64-bit arena. The Sledgehammer chip will have two CPUs on the same chip, and will run x86-based code without alteration. IBM is following a similar path. Their upcoming Power4 offering will also utilize two CPUs, sharing a large cache between them, on the same chip. The chip will run at speeds of at least 1 GHz. IBM is also banking on its customers relishing the idea of not moving to a new architecture. This chip is not likely to compete with Intel on the open market, however, as the chip will only be utilized in IBM machines. Compaq announced its upcoming EV8 Alpha chip, which will run at speeds of 1.2 to 2 GHz. This chip will go in a different direction than either IBM or AMD -- instead of trying to put 2 CPUs on the same chip, the EV8 will use a method called symmetric multithreading, which allows multiple instructions to execute at the same time. According to a Compaq spokesman, this new technique only adds 5 percent to the area of the chip, while doubling performance. (Note that per a recent Compaq announcement, future versions of Windows, including Windows 2000, will not be supported on the Alpha chip). Intel, meanwhile, has been working hard to ensure there will be a wide array of ready applications when its Itanium chip hits the market. In defense of criticism that Itanium is a new architecture requiring rebuilt applications, an Intel spokesman said that Itanium will be a new building block upon which further Itanium generations -- faster and more efficient ones -- can be built. 64-bit Windows has already been promised to run on Itanium, and it's a sure bet that many major developers will follow.